Transport for Greater Manchester
Shifting festive travel habits from cars to trams and buses.
Program
Create Fame
Services
Strategy, Advertising, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Copywriting.
Introduction
The festive period is the commercial high-water mark for Greater Manchester’s retail, hospitality and nightlife. But it is also when the region's transport network faces its sternest test. With roads grinding to a halt, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) needed to convince habitual car drivers to leave their vehicles behind and embrace the newly franchised Bee Network
The operational scale was immense, but so was the operational timeline: just four weeks from pitch win to full campaign asset delivery.
Working hand-in-glove as true collaborative partners, TfGM and The Behaviours Agency turned an intense countdown into an operational triumph. Together, we shaped the strategy, led a full bespoke production from scratch, and rolled out a high-impact, behaviourally primed campaign spanning more than 200 tailored assets across multiple channels.
This is the story of how we applied Brand Memorability to make the Bee Network totally un-ignorable this Christmas.
Our Challenge
Every November and December, festive footfall surges by 30%, adding over 80,000 extra car journeys onto Greater Manchester’s roads on weekends alone. Speeds in the busy areas routinely collapse below 5 mph.
Yet TfGM’s customer research revealed that over half the population (54%) sat within the ‘moveable middle’ - 22% Not Nows and 32% Dabblers. These audiences aren't anti-public transport; they are simply trapped by the cognitive friction of habit. When heading out to shop, socialise or celebrate, their default behaviour is to reach for the car keys. Blindly underestimating the misery of queues, parking costs and traffic until they are already stuck in it.
With newly expanded capacity across the network, including extended Trafford Park Line trams, 12-minute bus corridors, all-night weekend services and free overnight Park & Rides, TfGM had the infrastructure ready to go.
The challenge wasn't service provision; it was breaking ingrained habits and achieving mental availability when festive plans were being made.
Strategy
To move people from friction to action, we filtered the strategic challenge through our Brand Memorability Framework, anchoring the work in its four foundational principles:
Distinctiveness
Festive advertising is notorious for visual wallpaper. Generic glitter, snowflakes and sentimental tropes. We deliberately cut through this seasonal noise by exploiting the Bee Network’s distinctive brand assets (DBAs): bold Bee Yellow, high-contrast headlines, in the brand’s well known type-face and graphic hexagons. The campaign didn't whisper ‘council announcement’; it screamed confidence and cultural salience.
Relevance
People don't care about transport timetables; they care about their lived experiences. The real friction of driving wasn't just physical traffic - it was stolen festive joy. Every minute spent circling multi-storeys was time lost with family or friends. We tapped into audience motivations, by shifting the Bee Network from an operational service to an emotional enabler.
Emotional connection
Everyone’s has their own unique way of enjoying Christmas. We wanted this campaign to celebrate those people who don’t just do Christmas, they REALLY do Christmas. Those that don’t hold back. Paired with all the ways the Bee Network helps residents and visitors do more, the campaign needed to inspire and empower the people of GM to really enjoy themselves at Christmas.
Consistency
With three distinct campaign strands running concurrently - Gifting & Shopping, Festive Nights Out, and Events - the danger was creative fragmentation. We established a disciplined, cohesive creative architecture. Whether viewing roadside digital OOH, an Instagram Reel, an on-network poster or a late-night venue ad, the messaging felt unified, reinforcing clear memory structures at every touchpoint.
Creative Platform
Do more Christmas
This turned the usual transport narrative on its head. Instead of asking drivers to make a sacrifice, it gave them permission to maximise their experience of the festive season.
The campaign relied heavily on impactful headlines that expressed how and why people might do more over the Christmas period.
Whether it’s more shopping, later nights out, getting to all the shows and events or enjoying massive pretzels at the Christmas markets, the Bee Network is the enabler of your experiences.
We paired this with quirky and engaging imagery that was designed to depict how some people can’t control themselves during the festive period. We shot six scenarios on location Manchester, using the bus and tram network.
Production
A strategy is only as good as its execution, and the timeline was uncompromising: just four weeks from pitch appointment to final asset delivery.
Delivering at this pace required true partnership. Working in lockstep with the TfGM marketing team, we operated as one unified unit - moving from concept approval to delivery with agility and shared ambition.
To avoid the artificial, staged feel of stock imagery and ensure deep local authenticity, we orchestrated a massive end-to-end bespoke production, with the help of Matthew Stansfield and his amazing team:
Casting and styling: A complete casting process reflecting the authentic, diverse faces of Greater Manchester, supported by detailed wardrobe styling and festive prop curation that brought authentic seasonal energy to life.
Two-day on-location shoot: Across 48 intensive hours in Manchester city centre, we captured real-world moments of connection on location. Shooting live at Market Street and Exchange Square Metrolink stations and aboard an actual, fully operational (out of service) Bee Network bus!
At-scale asset creation: From that single, shoot library, we built a design system that produced over 200 multi-format assets. From roadside OOH timed to evening rush-hour bottlenecks to route-specific geo-targeted digital ads, radio, audio and on-network screens, every touchpoint was bespoke, polished and on-brand.
Behind the scenes